Shooters!

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The aging genre roars back to life on handsets.

By IGN Staff

Editors' Note: Looking for our list of Top 100 Shooters? There is currently an issue with our mobile redirect feature on that story. But you can manually access it by clicking here. Sorry about the inconvenience!

Many lament the death of the pure-bred shooter -- a top-down and side-scrolling game where the goal is nothing more than making stuff go "boom." The genre started fading when consoles went 3-D and those with final say over content, like Sony, decided that those kinds of games belonged in yesteryear. There are still quite a few shooters tearing up arcades in Japan, but here -- we just see the occasional console release, like Ikaruga and R-Type Final.

But on our handsets? That's a different story.

Recently, we encounter a growing number of representatives of the classic genre. Many, of course, are re-releases of old faves, but we're not complaining. It's good to see the genre enjoying something of a renaissance, even if it's on hardware that cannot truly support it. (We've discussed before how these game must use an "auto-fire" feature since handsets cannot accept more than one button input at a time.)

Including today's review of a Gundam game, we've rounded up some recent shooter reviews to show you how the genre is really doing. Some of these games are fantastic -- others don't fare so well. So much boils down to the structure of the game and whether or not the "auto fire" features completely ruins the game, or whether it affects the game very little.

Take a look at these articles. Download a game or two to support the publishers bringing these games to your handsets. And if your carrier is not offering some of these, fire off an email and tell them just how criminal they are to not provide them. After all, you're paying the bills, so you should get to call a few shots.